Terrorist Plots Against Jews and Israelis Abroad – Update Michael Whine Introduction On 19 July 2012, Shasta Khan was found guilty of conspiring to bomb Jewish targets in Manchester. Her husband Mohammed Khan had pleaded guilty and therefore did not stand trial. The following day, both were sent to prison. On 18 July 2012, a bus carrying Israeli tourists outside Burgas airport in Bulgaria was blown up, killing five Israelis and the Bulgarian bus driver. The official report of the Bulgarian authorities concluded that Hizbollah was behind the attack. The report stated that a Canadian and an Australian, who had been living in Lebanon and were members of Hizbollah, were responsible for the attack. According to the Bulgarian Interior Minister, “We have established that the two were members of the militant wing of Hizbollah.” The attack took place on the 18th anniversary of the bomb attack on the AMIA Jewish community centre. On 28 March 2013, a Cypriot court sentenced Hossam Taleb Yaacoub to four years imprisonment for planning to attack Israeli citizens and for his membership of a criminal organization, namely Hizbollah. Yaacoub had been gathering intelligence on Israeli tourists, noting arrival times of flights arriving from Israel and the details of buses taking visitors to hotels. These three incidents encapsulate the nature of the ongoing threat to Jewish communities and Israeli institutions abroad: both are targets, and the threat comes from different sources, with Iran and its surrogates, as well as al-Qaeda and its affiliates and sympathisers in the global jihad movement, presenting the major concerns. CST’s report on terrorism against Jews and Israeli institutions around the world, published at the end of 2010, noted that during the previous 40 years there had been some 427 recorded plots and attacks. This paper brings the tally up to date, and, as with the previous report, it focuses attention on the direction from which these attacks come.1 The 2010 report (which was itself an update of a report published by ICT in 2003) noted that the terror threat to Jews comes primarily from three sources: (1) al-Qaeda, its affiliates in the global jihad movement and self-radicalised Islamists sympathetic to this cause; (2) Iran and its surrogates, of which the most active is Hezbollah; and (3) far-right terrorists. During the late 1970s and until the mid 1980s, anarchist and extreme left terror groups also attacked Jews, synagogues and Jewish schools. However, sustained counterterrorist strategies and changing economic circumstances led to a drastic decline in threats and attacks from this quarter. Palestinian secular terrorist groups reduced their attacks beyond the Middle East after the Madrid and Oslo peace accords, when most forswore terrorism beyond the immediate theatre of conflict, and after the deaths of many of the leaders (Abu Nidal, Naif Hawatmeh, Yasser Arafat, etc). The report noted that antisemitism remains central to the ideologies of all three groups, and that they make little or no distinction between Jews and Israelis. Also, the ideologies of extremist groups provide a milieu within which activists are further radicalised, so that perpetrating acts of terrorism against Jews and Israelis becomes a fulfilment of their ideological aims. 1 It provided evidence that, while the different sectors usually operate in isolation, there have been cases where they have cooperated across their ideological boundaries. Iran in particular has used surrogates, such as Hizbollah, converts to radical Islam or mercenaries, who may appear as unknown ‘clean skins’ to security services. There is also evidence that terrorist groups are increasingly cooperating with criminal syndicates. Iran and Hezbollah have sub-contracted terrorist attacks to criminals (as in Azerbaijan), and raised funds through black market criminal schemes (as in the USA and Latin America). Since 2010, the number has increased of self-radicalised Islamists who follow the guidance of global jihad ideologue Abu Mus’ab al Suri, as well as Anwar Awlaki, the now deceased ideologue behind Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), to attack domestic targets with devices manufactured from easily obtainable constituents. This has required security services to enhance their capabilities to search out those accessing the proliferating open and closed Internet and interactive social networks, which are designed to seduce and radicalise their viewers. Al-Qaeda’s core infrastructure may have been terminally degraded, but its affiliates have been reinvigorated by new conflicts, such as Syria and Somalia, to which European and American Muslims have travelled in order to join the conflict, or to seek training, which they may use against domestic targets on their return home. The Salafi ‘gateway’ organisations, such as Hizb ut Tahrir and the Al Muhajiroun successor groups, remain active in Europe and the USA. They radicalise members, some of whom follow the conveyor belt processes to recruitment into jihadi groups abroad. These groups promote a violent antisemitic ideology, although their public pronouncements and literature are constrained by laws against incitement. The consequences of this incitement are plainly seen in the prosecutions and convictions of their followers in those countries that use their domestic legislation to set legal parameters for what is, and what is not, acceptable speech in modern society.2 In addition to the incidents listed below, there have been other plots which were foiled in their early stages, and where few details have been made public. These include a perceived threat earlier in 2012 to Israelis in Bulgaria, following which the Israeli press reported that its transport ministry had warned the Bulgarian authorities of a potential threat.3 Later, in May 2012, Israeli media reported that the Turkish authorities had thwarted a potential plot to Israelis travelling to Turkey, and, at about the same time, a plot had been thwarted in South Africa, again based on Israeli information provided to the local security services.4 A final introductory remark: in many cases, Jews were not the primary targets, but secondary or tertiary ones. Primary targets for global jihad movement terrorists are more usually Western facilities (government as well as civilian), targets associated with states with armed peace keeping forces in Muslim lands, such as Iraq or Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the fact that operational intelligence has also been gathered on Jewish targets underscores the antisemitic nature of those engaged in contemporary terror. The targets for Iran and its surrogates are primarily Israel and Jews, however. It is worth noting that the general media tends to ignore the specific terror threat to Jews around the world. This may be because governments themselves play down the threat for fear of not being able to manage the public relations consequences. Or it may be because the political orientation of some media outlets leads them to ignore the anti-Jewish specificities of jihadi and Iranian directed terror. 2 Reversing the order used in the two reports previously published, this report lists the incidents chronologically, starting with the most recent. Chronology of plots and attacks Kano, Nigeria, 16-28 May 2013 Security forces uncovered a Hizbollah terror cell said to be threatening western and Israeli targets in Nigeria. Mustapha Fawaz was the first to be arrested, followed by Abdullah Tahini and then Talal Roda, at whose house was discovered an underground bunker containing a large quantity of weapons. All three are Lebanese nationals. The men remain in custody pending trial. A few days previously, on 13 May, Azim Aghajani, an Iranian national, and Usman Abbas Jega, a Nigerian, were jailed for five years in connection with smuggling 13 shipping containers of weapons into Nigeria in October 2010. The weapons were due to be shipped on to Gambia, West Africa.5 Kathmandu, Tibet, 13 April 2013 An Iranian national, Mohsin Khosravian, was detained outside the Israeli Embassy in Nepal, after he was observed behaving suspiciously. He was later handed over to the Nepalese police, who subsequently determined that he had entered the country ten days earlier, on a false Israeli passport while concealing his genuine Iranian documents in his luggage. He also had a tourist map of the neighbourhood around the Israeli Embassy and had been spotted making frequent and suspicious visits to the area. He admitted travelling from Iran to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he had been given the forged Israeli passport, and thence to Sri Lanka and finally to Nepal. He remains in custody pending trial.6 Istanbul, Turkey, March 2013 Turkish police arrested 12 persons: two Chechens, two Azeris, and eight Turks said to be connected to al-Qaeda, who were plotting to bomb the US Embassy in Ankara, a museum and a synagogue in the Balat district of Istanbul. Simultaneous raids in Istanbul and Tekirdag uncovered 22 kilos of explosives and a selection of firearms. They also retrieved laptop computers, photographs and floor plans of the synagogue, as well as other incriminating material. Six members of the group remain in custody pending the outcome of investigations.7 3 London / Birmingham, UK 21 February 2013 Ashik Ali, Irfan Khalid and Irfan Naseer from the Sparkhill area of Birmingham were convicted at Woolwich Crown Court, London, on 12 counts of committing acts in preparation for a terrorist attack. Inspired by al-Qaeda, Naseer and Khalid had travelled to Pakistan for training and preparation, and on returning recruited six others with the intention of carrying out shootings and suicide bombings with rucksack-born bombs in what they intended would be the UK’s most damaging terrorist attack. Although they had not identified their targets before being arrested, the group had talked about storming a synagogue. The other members of the group had earlier pleaded guilty and had already been sentenced.8 Lagos, Nigeria, 20 February 2013 Abdullahi Mustapha Berende, Sulaiman Saka and Saheed Adewumi were arrested on suspicion of being members of an Iranian-tasked and trained terrorist cell that planned to attack US, Israeli and Jewish targets in Lagos.